Getting Ready To Race With F1® 2018's Multiplayer Super Licence

With F1® 2018’s release date getting closer and closer, it’s time to strap yourself in with one of this year’s new features: the multiplayer super licence. We got wheel-to-wheel with Senior Games Designer Luke Stephenson to find out more.
Hi Luke! Could you tell us what you do on F1® 2018?
“I’m a Senior Games Designer on the F1® team who oversees multiplayer - although I work on many areas throughout the game - and I designed the new Ranked multiplayer and Super Licence systems for F1® 2018.”
Could you tell us what the Super Licence is?
“At its heart the Super Licence is a means to keep track of three things relating to the multiplayer game: your overall skill, the cleanliness of your racecraft, and your time invested. Improvement in each of these areas is something that players can aspire to achieve, and also serves as a point of comparison against the other drivers you encounter online.

“Your ‘skill value’ goes up and down based on the skill of the opponents that you defeat or are defeated by, and this value determines your Rank.

“Next comes your Safety Rating, which evaluates how long you are able to race between incidents. Each incident you are involved in will issue you incident points based on severity, and keeping these to a minimum will improve your Safety Rating over time.

“Finally, your Level increases as you gain ‘experience’ from completing races, finishing in strong positions, and hitting various statistic milestones. This last part of the Super Licence persists across both Ranked and Unranked so that you can continue to build your Super Licence however you play, but it won’t be factored into the Ranked matchmaking process.”

What was the intention behind the Super Licence – how did it come about?“There were two major motivations driving this. Firstly, we have had lots of feedback from our community members who, when trying to find competitive public games, are frequently put off the experience by one or two disruptive drivers. The Super Licence is our most significant step to date in regards to stamping out that problem, as those disruptive drivers will tend to be placed in different lobbies to those who give each other racing room.

“Secondly, as many will know the inaugural F1® Esports Series last year was an incredible success powered by F1® 2017, and we want to develop that area of our game further by creating an environment that could produce the next generation of esports champions. So we want our multiplayer game to have a meaningful sense of progression, to foster a culture of clean racing, and to allow new talent to emerge, regardless of whether you are dropping in for a casual few races, or trying to reach Master Rank against the best in the world.”

How will Ranks work?“Players will be matched into the most suitable Ranked lobbies we can find with other players of a similar Skill and Safety Rating. Your Skill value is the number that you’ll see next to your Rank, and that’s what we base all our calculations off. The system will expect a player of higher Skill to beat a player with lower Skill, so if that doesn’t happen than both players will have their skill values adjusted a small amount. Every player is judged against everyone else, so when you’re in a 20 car race you can think of it like having 19 one-on-one races. The more you play, the closer you should trend to your ‘true’ skill level, and the better the racing should become.
“The Skill value is also tied to your Rank, which is the badge that you can see throughout the game. Going from 1900 to 2000 for example may promote you from Silver to Gold, so these can serve as great targets as you climb up the ranks.”

How will the Safety Rating change games?“Fair drivers want to race against other fair drivers, and that’s what the Safety Rating system is designed to encourage. Drivers that respect their competitors will advance their Safety Rating, get matched against other respectful drivers, and then have even cleaner races. This should encourage more players to give racing room – especially down into turn 1 – and maybe think twice about those dive-bombs from 100 metres back. You don’t have to go for every gap that exists, after all!”
I’m not a fast driver – will this affect me when playing online?“When racing against other people online, the important thing is not outright pace, but rather your relative pace to other drivers. With Ranks, we are trying to keep drivers of similar ability racing together, which should increase the chances of close, fun races regardless of your speed.

“Of course, whatever level you compete at, it’s important to ensure everyone is competing on an even field; that’s why Ranked races use equal car performance with modern cars, and Spec races are used when racing our wide selection of classic cars.”

I think I get it. So you level contains your skill score, which we're already accustomed to as this is equal to Gold, Silver or Bronze with your skill level tied to it. OK, got that. But what is unclear are the hexes under the Licence column of A, B and C with color code of Green, Yellow, and Bronze respectively. Can this column be elucidate upon as this is till unclear to me? I presume this is the super licence indicated but how does it progress?

Licence Level Driver

Hex A Hex 15 Bronze F1_Racer_1

Hex B Hex 6 Silver F1_Racer_2

Hex C Hex 50 Silver F1_Racer_3

Hex C Hex 10 Bronze F1_Racer_4

Hex B Hex 9 Gold F1_Racer_5

Hex 3 Bronze F1_Racer_6

Hex C Hex 11 Bronze F1_Racer_7

Post edited by FOneFanatic on August 2018

If his unpleasant wounding, has in someway enlightened the rest of us, as to the grim finish beneath the glossy veneer of criminal life, and has inspired us all to change our ways, then his injuries carry with it an inherent nobility, and a supreme glory!

True, if somebody lost control in front of view, and you cant do anything to avoid à crash, you receive immediatly à penalty . Also you can received some penalty if somebody hit you at the back. I will post some vidéo soon. It will be nice to eject from the session drivers with poors connexion

Why always at the beginning of the game the stats doesn't work?if i restart the game the always start again at zero.do we have to wait for the first patch and when we this be, cause i think codemasters will reset everything at the ep and stats like they did last year?!

True, if somebody lost control in front of view, and you cant do anything to avoid à crash, you receive immediatly à penalty . Also you can received some penalty if somebody hit you at the back. I will post some vidéo soon. It will be nice to eject from the session drivers with poors connexion

This happens way to often. My saftey rating has gone down loads due to all of the above.

The big problem is to receive unfair penalties. The guy misses and leaves the lane, tries desperately to return and I am coming and I try to deflect him, I crash him and I receive penalty and not him.

On GT Sport the value is to let them risk wasting themselves with a spin out for over aggressive racing and continue your own race as normal, even if it looses you a place, at the end the result is you still advance in safety whereas the other guy doesn't. the annoyance is short lived as the likeliness of seeing that player again is very low and as stated above, the races just keep getting cleaner and cleaner as your rating keeps rising.It worked very well for me in GT Sport, the only times anyone hits me its from a mistake and very light, the races are amazing!

Carystus PS4 Pro"The fact is I don't drive just to get from A to B. I enjoy feeling the car's reactions, becoming part of it." ~Enzo Ferrari

You can choose 25% race instead of 5, otherwise the rules are the same throughout Ranked. Assists are allowed but each assist you have active will penalise your skill rating (so you won't gain as much rating for a win with assists than a win without them).

You can choose 25% race instead of 5, otherwise the rules are the same throughout Ranked. Assists are allowed but each assist you have active will penalise your skill rating (so you won't gain as much rating for a win with assists than a win without them).

Hi Mate

Thanks for this little tidbit of info , means our No Assist Drivers finally get some form of reward for doing it the hard way .

You can choose 25% race instead of 5, otherwise the rules are the same throughout Ranked. Assists are allowed but each assist you have active will penalise your skill rating (so you won't gain as much rating for a win with assists than a win without them).

Thankyou for the information, not what I was hoping for but it is what it is, think ill stick to custom lobbys.

If you go off-track but don't get a Warning, will that impact your Safety Rating?

Does your Safety Rating decrease even with a level [0] Warning?

Does Qualifying have any effect on Safety Rating?

Is your Safety Rating increase/decrease influenced by the number of opponents in the lobby?

Does your Safety Rating drop if you Retire from the race and/or quit out early?

1) Not directly, only if you get another warning for something like corner cutting, hitting another player as you rejoin etc.2) No, only incidents where you see the incident point value ("Warning - Did Bad Thing [1]") hurt your Safety Rating.3) No, if it's [0] it doesn't impact anything.4) Qualifying does not have any effect on Safety Rating5) No, number of opponents has no direct impact.6) Yes. We don't treat retirements as incidents directly, but if you have 1 incident and complete 5 laps, that is better than 1 incident and completing 1 lap. So with less distance driven your SR is not as good.

@Britpoint Could ranked lobbies be changed to have strict rules enabled please? It's a bit silly when people can just skip the corners to win races and level up in ranked without penalty. It will probably help separate clean racers from cheaters if corner cutting will affect safety rating as well.